The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging [Hardcover]

Kate Young Caley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 2002

Fusing an intimate memoir with an outspoken critique of organized religion's failure to welcome all into its community, The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is the moving story of one woman's search for a sense of belonging.

Growing up in a small town in New Hampshire, Kate Young Caley attends a strong community church where everyone is treated like family, members selflessly help one another, and all the kids are made to feel special. Then, suddenly, everything changes. Her father is hospitalized for many months and her mother is forced to take a job as a waitress to support the family. But the job requires Kate's mother to serve alcohol, which goes against the church's covenant, and the family, banned from attending services, soon finds itself emotionally ostracized from the community.

In The House Where the Hardest Things Happened, Caley recounts the hurt and confusion she felt as a young girl and her long search for a religious community that would comfort her spiritually, support her emotionally, and respect her intellectual ideals. As she chronicles her journey, she candidly discusses her problems with the way the Christian faith is expressed and with the people who lay claim to it. Her exploration of religious teachings on homosexuality is especially powerful as she explains why she is unwilling, and unable, to deny the love she has for her gay brother.

At once the story of a family profoundly transformed by tragedy and an incisive exploration of the meaning of spirituality, The House Where the Hardest Things Happened will appeal to readers of Joyce Carol Oates’s We Were the Mulvaneys and Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. Beautifully written, it brings to life Caley's inspiring determination to reclaim her right to practice her beliefs–the most basic human right of all.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is the best kind of spiritual memoir. It tells a great story, has a reliable narrator, and teaches enormous lessons about Christianity and spirit without once faltering into preachy, "spiritual" language. When Kate Young Caley was a young child her family belonged to the First Church of God in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. "Back then the sounds of Sunday mornings were sounds that meant everything was all right," she writes. "That we were all together. Cleaned and dressed up.... When we walked into the church everybody loved us."

But when Caley's father is diagnosed with cancer and is hospitalized for months, Caley's 29-year-old mother needs to support the family by waitressing in town. Because the restaurant sells liquor, the mother is breaking the church's covenant, and the church community votes the family out of the church. This cruel banishment, when the family most needed a spiritual community, becomes the defining moment of Caley's childhood. More than a beautifully written personal story, this is a lifelong exposé of the hypocrisy inherent in many church communities. Ultimately, we see that the problem isn't Christianity, but the people who control and manipulate it. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with a child's view of a church where "everybody loved us," Caley relates her adult fixation on the day when this church ejected her mother for having "broken the covenant" by working in a restaurant that served alcohol. Caley's brothers wonder why she still thinks about this it occurred nearly 35 years ago and her mother feigns forgetfulness before finally admitting that she remembers the names of her ousters. The adult Caley seems shocked by the realization that these people weren't strangers, but women "I still meet sometimes at the post office or the October Fair. Women I know," yet this information doesn't propel her to confront them to discuss the event and its effects. Caley doesn't explore the possibility that perhaps the reasons for her family's ejection from the smalltown New Hampshire church may have had more to do with her father's nervous breakdown or her brother's being gay. Her quest for answers is unsatisfyingly shallow, and her search for God leads her only as far as another Protestant church. Caley is admittedly concerned about hurting her mother by examining these old wounds, which may explain her investigation's superficiality. However, readers are left with more questions than the author addresses. What's missing is the perspective of an adult recalling distant childhood events, some revelation of new information, an epiphany of emotions about what happened or psychological insight. Instead, Caley's view seems stuck in the eyes of the six-year-old she once was, forever craving an imagined world of perfect adults and unconditional love. (On sale June 18)
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (June 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385502982
• ISBN-13: 978-0385502986
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #747,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book !!, August 28, 2002

By 

Phil Trom (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging (Hardcover)

The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is a book which was written from the heart.

The author has taken her view of spirituality and intertwined it with her often humorous upbringing from a young child to her adult years. Unlike most books dealing with our religious and spiritual experiences, Kate Caley has shared her everyday experiences, funny, sad, mundane and extraordinary as they are, and shaped them into a story which propels you along from one chapter to the next. The book in no way tells us how to act or live our lives, but rather explains what worked and what continues to work for the author. She expresses that the destination of her journey, is certainly far less important than the journey itself.

The book is fun !! Not something usually associated with books of this theme, but fun comes through the pages as we are invited into her world of childhood awe, motherhood, raising a family and even tragedy. All these events are written about in a manner which flows off the page as if we were having a conversation with Kate Caley.
When I finished the book, I wanted more.

Go buy this book !!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, July 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging (Hardcover)

Interesting read. I enjoyed the flashbacks through out the book. Having short chapters gave you some time to think about what you just read. I look forward to reading her next book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Maybe, Just Maybe..., May 26, 2003

By 

Eric Wilson "novelist" (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging (Hardcover)

Caley's book is a beautiful memoir with an arresting title and a melancholic cover. Within five pages, I was entranced by her lean, effective prose. I can relate to her church scars, and I anguished with her telling of the tale. To see her young mother and cancer-weary father ousted by well-meaning Christians...it's a sad and not uncommon story. Along life's path, Caley shows us that she has found some sense of peace regarding those years. She never sugarcoats the pain or misdeeds, but she chooses wisely to hold back the bitter words of revenge.

"The House Where the Hardest Things Happened" starts with such clarity of vision, proceeds smoothly through defining moments in Caley's life, then closes with a scene or two that bring redemption full circle via her own daughters and her new church home. Somehow, though, in conclusion, the book loses the steam that it builds. This may be a reflection of Caley's own slow release of anger. Or a symbol of her forgiveness at work. For me, having come through similar frustrations in a religious upbringing, it seems that she holds back on facing those final, deepest anguishes. She only brushes up against the subject of her gay brother. She sheds little light on her siblings' reactions to the same mistreatment. She shows so much grace--and for that I can only commend her--but she helps expose wounds many of us have faced, then leaves us only partially soothed.

Hey, Caley's writing can serve unapologetically as a balm. You will appreciate every word. If, however, you're hoping for soul-surgery, you'll still seek the aid of a Physician.

And maybe, just maybe, that's Caley's intent.